Foggy...

Most weekday mornings my husband and I share a cup of coffee while watching twenty minutes or so of the 5:30 a.m. news. Our news channel of choice is the local Fox station, Fox17.  We enjoy the low key camaraderie of morning crew, Deanna Falzone, Mike Avery and Garry Frank.  For the most part, twenty minutes gives us all the news, weather and traffic we need to start our day.

Lately, we've chuckled about Garry, the weather guy, and his apparent fascination with fog. During his weather recap, more often than not, he somehow manages to insert fog into his forecast. And more often than not, we never encounter fog. But on Monday, his forecast was accurate. Fog was heavy during my morning commute. While visibility was reduced, the sun worked hard to shine through the thick shroud.  On clear, sunny mornings, even shortly after sunrise, the sun is so bright, one cannot look directly at its brightness. On Monday morning, the fog allowed me to look full into the sun and see its splendor.

In my daily walk with God, I can relate to the sunny versus foggy weather conditions. Often on those days when things are going well and life's outlook is sunny, I don't even attempt to look for the Son. I'm oblivious to the warmth and beauty that gazes down and engulfs me. Yet on those days when life is gloomy and my direction seems foggy, I search for the Son and find his full glory. Always there. Always waiting.

Today I'm reminded to celebrate the sunny days with thanksgiving and joy. I'm reminded to set my eyes on things above, and find God there. And on those foggy days, when I cry out to the Lord, he is there. Always there. Always waiting.

Isaiah 43:2-4 (The Message):

“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you. When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down. When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end— Because I am God, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior. I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in! That’s how much you mean to me! That’s how much I love you! I’d sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you.

Job Hunt

Our son, Barry, became a college alum in May. Woot! Woot! Woot! We applaud him, along with the multitude of graduates, for their hard work, dedication and perseverance these last four years. Over the past seventeen years, Barry woke each morning knowing the plans for the coming day, week and even year. He had a game plan and a life goal. The routine of class and study consumed the better share of his days.

That routine came to an abrupt end on May 4. On that Monday morning, he woke to a daunting new task.

The job hunt.

The search for jobs has changed dramatically in the years since my hunt. The newspaper job postings have been replaced with online job boards, staffing agencies, job fairs and web sites. Employers use web-based personality tests, video interviews and email to communicate instead of phone calls and face-to-face interviews. It's a rough world out there!

It's amazing the sheer number of jobs available via Indeed.com, CareerBuilder and Monster. From controller to cashier, teacher to custodian, sales rep to bus driver, hundreds of jobs are posted in West Michigan every day. And while my job hunter searches in a narrow range for his degree field, every job posted is important and necessary in the world we call home.

This weekend, the degree to which this is true was brought to light in Facebook posts and news articles. In a town in Illinois, a school custodian made headlines. "Mr. Steve" became famous for his role as custodian, or more importantly, his ability to impact children's lives at the elementary school were he is employed. Turns out that "Mr. Steve" made it his job to care about and look after the kids he encountered every day at his job.

Photo: Carrie Doig, Facebook/Bourbonnais Elementary School District

I don't know if Steve Weidner is a Christian, but I do know this:  God uses everyday, ordinary people to accomplish his purposes. God places us in our roles as sanitation engineers, accountants, teachers, sales reps, stay at home parents and vice presidents to work out his plan. God wants us to use our talents to further his kingdom. Right now. Right where we are. Right where we belong.

Click here to read Steve's story.

And read here to use your everyday, ordinary life to fulfill an extraordinary purpose:

Romans 12: 1-2 (The Message):

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Places we love...

I just finished a wall project I've been working on for several months. I had the great idea to find vintage maps of our favorite places and frame them in a wall collage. Little did I know that finding maps from decades ago is not a task for the fainthearted.  I scoured thrift stores and antique stores. I searched EBay, Etsy and Pinterest.  Any Google map search was thoroughly exhausted.

Finally, a dealer at a local antique shop came through. He told me paper products do not make good booth products. Once handled, they tear and ruin. We talked about what I was trying to find and he promised to look through his home collection. I was excited when he called me back that same afternoon. I scored a 1911 vintage map atlas and a 1960 Upper Peninsula county road map for a reasonable price, given I was buying two books for only one page from each.

In the end, my hunt turned up an assortment of new and vintage maps, along with new and vintage frames and accessories. I am thrilled with the way our family room map collage looks.

 Reflecting on my family's favorite places made me realize the memories and vacation planning are almost as important as the actual places themselves.

Millecoquins Lake.

Negril.

Hilton Head Island.

Ocho Rios.

Wolverine.


All these places hold sweet memories.






But another place of distinction is simply, "HOME,"

Home. A place of love and acceptance. A place to feel safe and secure. The place we long to be after we've visited our favorite places. "Home" left me wondering. After we graduate from this world and leave our favorite place on earth, for which place will we long? We seldom talk about this place.

Heaven. Scripture tells us that this world is only our temporary home. So if this is my temporary home, am I planning for graduation day? Have I made the necessary arrangements for the place I long to be some day? My answer is a resounding, "Yes."

What about you? Jesus tells us the simplicity of following the road map and the way to make the arrangements in John 14, here from The Message:

14 1-4 “Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”
5 Thomas said, “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?”
6-7 Jesus said, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You’ve even seen him!”

Oh the places they'll go...

Yesterday our youngest graduated from college. The day was filled with celebrations. Family lunch. Photos. Graduation ceremony. More photos. Family dinner.



Nothing brings back memories like a life event. The memory of a two year old climbing in the clothes dryer when mom was doing laundry. Memories of that same two year old helping Grandpa wash his car. The skinny kid with huge feet playing basketball like it was his job. Memories of family vacations spent with grandparents on both sides of our family.



Oh the memories.

And then the flood of emotions comes. The longing for a dad and grandpa to be present at graduation. The heart ache of missing hugs, untold stories and the absence of that familiar scent of cologne. And while my dad's been gone for nearly nine years, yesterday there was a tug in my heart and more than a few tears in my eyes.

And then, as if God wanted me to remember his promise, I turned to Matthew 22 where the Pharisees questioned Jesus about a woman married seven times. They asked whose wife she would be in heaven. Jesus replies with these words of promise:

"You don’t know your Bibles, and you don’t know how God works. At the resurrection we’re beyond marriage. As with the angels, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding your speculation on whether the dead are raised or not, don’t you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.’ The living God defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the living.”

The promise of seeing my dad again one day brings joy to my heart and wipes away the tears of sadness. And so Dr. Seuss' book, "Oh the Places You'll Go" reminds me that the place that is promised for us as believers will be filled with great celebration. A home coming. A great reunion.

Congratulations, Barry. Grandpa would be so proud of you!

 

Magnetized...

I'm a sucker for unique gift items. So it comes as no surprise that last week I purchased such an item.






A magnetic hourglass.



Purchased by me.



For me.

Now it's not really an hourglass, per se, since it takes less than a minute to empty, but rather it has an hourglass shape. Nonetheless, it's fascinating to watch. Flip the hourglass off its base, turn it over and watch the black "sand" fall into stalagmite formations below. Eventually, the stalagmite formations morph into an almost perfect half orb, complete with spiky exterior.

The secret for this interesting time waster is in the sand and special base. The "sand" is actually ferrous or iron filings and the base contains a nickel-sized magnet. The ferrous filings are attracted to the magnet and continue to build off one another in branch-like formations until the final few moments when they mold into one another to form the spiky half-orb. All the "sand" is centered around the one powerful magnet. Even when tilted, the orb stays together, as if glued to the magnet.

Jesus is the magnet in my life. As I fall through the hourglass of life, I'm attracted and pulled to him. And as him as my foundation, I'm called to do my part in attracting others to him as well. Like the ferrous filings, we, as Christians, are building those branch-like formations. We find our place in the sphere. Baptist. Reformed. Christian Reformed. Methodist. Catholic. Presbyterian. And so on. And so on. All one. All Christians. All built on one foundation. And when the last sand falls through the hourglass, we will meld together as one. One holy church, united together around our center.

Jesus.

Matthew 28:18-20
Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”

3.14

I am a numbers person. In my job, I reconcile numbers. In spreadsheets. In bank reconciliations. In funds and accounts.

Upon reflection, numbers are responsible for order in our world. Seriously. Think about it. Numbers make up our calendars. Our speed limits. Our currency. The seconds, minutes and hours in a day. Counting and mathematics are learned early and used in every day life.

Because of my fixation with numbers, I find it fascinating that, in a few short days, folks are celebrating a "day of the century." That's right. Saturday, March 14, 2015 is Pi Day. You'll remember pi from Geometry (incidentally, my worst high school subject) as the symbol  π. The significance of Saturday morning during the nine o'clock hour is spelled out by pi as 3.141592653 and is visualized in the shirt below:

photo by sunfrogshirts.com

Saturday aside, pi is equally mind-boggling for its numerical value. We typically know and shorten π to the numerical value of 3.14, but in reality, pi's decimal representation never ends and is never repeated. Simply stated, its end has never been found. Its decimal length is limitless.

That said, humans still feel the need to search for its end. Mathematicians cannot be satisfied with "not" knowing. With the aid of computers, scientific means have calculated the decimal length out into the trillions of digits. That's trillions.

And me? I'm a simple sort of person. I'm perfectly happy with the knowledge that pi equals 3.14. I know it to be true. It's been proven. I learned it in my Geometry class. I found it in my Geometry textbook.

God is a Christian's spiritual pi. Knowing him brings order to our world. His power if infinite. His boundaries are limitless. His love is beyond measure. Unfortunately, some humans try to put God in a box. They try to understand his boundaries. The need for knowledge outweighs faith.

Colossians 2 (The Message):

"You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything. Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve." 

And me? I have a simple faith. I know that having Jesus as my Savior equals life.  I know it to be true. It's been proven. I learned it in my home and in my church. I found it in my life's textbook - the Bible. Hebrews 11:1 confirms its simplicity: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

You don't need to figure out God. Just believe that he is. Jesus died for me. For you.

No God. No life. Know God. Know life.

Son rays...

Three weeks ago, my hubby and I were basking in the warm, golden Jamaican sunshine. Ahh. It seems so long ago. The snow, wind and breathtakingly low temperatures of these past weeks have made vacation a distant memory.

Earlier this week my car thermometer measured -6.

That's right.

Minus.

Six.

Degrees.




I long to be back in our tropical paradise. So as I sit by our wood pellet fireplace and feel its heat warm my soul, I daydream about the sandy beach of Little Bay, Jamaica. As I close my eyes, I can picture the golden sunsets across the Caribbean Sea. And I remember a special sunset where God spoke to me through his glorious creation.

(This pic was a different evening and didn't quite capture the path)

One late afternoon, we lounged on our beach chairs and watched the sun slide slowly toward the horizon. The sky was clear, the breeze was warm and the sea was calm. Several minutes before sunset, the sun's reflection blazed a path across the water and onto the damp sand of the shore, directly in front of us. The mesmerizing strip was narrow, but undeniably straight. Perfect and beautiful, it seemed to invite us in. The path shimmered only for a minute or two, and then the golden ball dipped into the sea, extinguishing the path in its wake.

God reminded me of how he calls us. He asks us to follow the narrow road. The one road. The only road to the Father. His path is blazing with the light of the Son. Jesus is the way. The only way. Many will be invited, but few will follow this narrow path to the Father.

We're told about the path in the Bible. First, here, in Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV):

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

And then we are encouraged to follow it again in Ephesian 4:2-6 (The Message):

I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.

You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.

Quit lounging and join the journey.